I do like the comment about how if the all the enemys level up along with your charecter you shoudn't bother with a levelup system at all. I can agree with this because to me it seems like a double edge sword. My faviorte game Final Fantasy 8 used a system simlar to this and wail it did keep the game chalengeing it also meant you coudn't beat the games strogest enimes ( Like omega weapon) Just by levling as opposed to say a game like pokemon where if you have trobble defating a certain oppent you just level up until your strong enough to compltly overpower them with no real strgey involed what so ever.

Damn it, I was going to make that point in the comment section of your last review but I found that I just could not be arsed. Damn my sloth like nature. Yes this is true and it's a killer among RPG's sort of the reason why FFVIII is one of my least favourite Final Fantasies. When you don't progress then there's no point in bothering. The whole fun in RPG's (well at least it is for me) is the levelling up, starting off as a little pussy who get's his arse handed to him by rodents, to becoming a demi-god that eat's lightning and craps thunder. Sort of like real-life where your a little child who depends on his mother to get him the cookie jar until you get older, then you are capable of picking up the cookie jar and eating as much the smug bastards as you want. I think boxing (or any other combat sport) is a good example in real life. You come in on your first day of training and get your arse kicked because your a tiny little weakling who hasn't yet learned how to punch, you've not exercised or built muscle so your just fodder for the big boys. Then come a few years later and your the one doing the crushing because of your experience. Now if real life was like oblivion and that every day I trained, the rest of the world got equally as good, then why bother. Why not just sit on my arse eating cheerios and watching porn for all the good it's going to do for me.

Back to FFVIII and Oblivion, with these games it almost seems to be encouraging you not to progress or level, the higher the level you become, the higher the level the mobs become and they even start to out do you. This makes little sense in a world as big as these. Oblivions world is big and is obviously that big for exploration (although most of it looks like the same forest with a few cliffs here and there), however because your best chance of completing this game is to be weak and not fight, what is the point of bothering to explore?. Exploration is going to end with you fighting, which equals levels, which equals a harder difficulty. What would had made sense would had been to have certain areas that were more dangerous to others. Like have one area of the map with dragons and evil tentacle monsters that would be a challenge to even the highest of levelled characters.

I understand that the opposite of this is just as much a killer too, when your levelling up and becoming hard as hell only to realise that your just going to be facing the same levelled enemies over and over again. That means there's no challenge, there's no giant man eating dragon on the other end of that cliff that I need to level up to stand a chance, no there's just a little lizard that I'll just trample under my feet without even bothering to care. We do need a challenge to over come, we do need an actual point to levelling your self to the point where you can punch out God. Otherwise your just bored as hell, chopping away at mindless weaklings, you so powerful that you don't even have to look at the screen to play, You can just hold the joy stick in one, pressing random buttons, while watching T.V, polishing your trophies or doing any other mindless thing that doesn't involve this game. Then at this point your asking your self "Why am I playing this game?" when I could be doing millions of other activities that would be a lot more fun... like watching paint dry... or porn.

That is one thing I have always enjoyed about RPGs is how you do get a chance to get revenge on the bullies. The ones that do it really good are when you start off trying to get revenge on the bully and through you efforts you learn of a much greater plot behind the villain causing him to do what he does so when you defeat the villain you have a strong purpose of continuing forth going from revenge to hero as you seek out after those above the one you just got revenge on.

Another interesting read. And I agree, Niko was a guy I expected to be bland and shallow but it worked out just great. Although the gameplay never can match Saint's Rows [ This is Yahtzee's space, don't flame or fear his voice ] I thorougly enjoyed his devolepment. The sexy accent is a plus.

About the revenge part, I think Mass Effect done a good job with the revenge part. With the New Game+ feature you were capabale of unleashing hell at the very start at the people that caused so much trouble.

I tend to like CJ more than Niko, I think what was missing in San Andres was fear, fear of retaliation from fellow gang members if you stepped out of line, I think that would have made CJ more of a stronger character, because it could cover up more of his bad streak and more realistic game.

I'm kind of surprised that he never mentioned the super gravity gun from Half Life 2, because when it comes to end game super badassery that moment did it right. Introduce a game breaking mechanic that comes into play for only a small portion of the game. Get to kill enemies that have been bothersome all game by just breathing on them, but not have it last for too long to get boring.

Gotta love the moment in Prototype you get that mid-air slam with the sword, which immediately renders both those troublesome big motherfuckers and tanks instantly to the equivalent of moving barrels of EXP. For how long did they torment us with that, where trying to fight two of those buggers at once meant getting your buttocks pulled out your throat, and hit-and-run was your best bet (if you couldn't find a rocket nearby). And then, towards the end of the game, they give you that wonderful move, which neatly slices the big brutes in two with one or two strikes. That is indeed the epitome of revenge and leveling in gaming.

Awesome, Niko Bellic's my favourite GTA protagonist as well! He's tough but caring, hard but likeable, humble yet strong. A man of few words, but great wit. He's very well written. Another character I'd like to try out is Luis from Ballad of Gay Tony. Haven't had the chance yet but think I'd like him too.

Will we get to command a Big Fucking Ship at the end of FSG:TG? (talk about revenge and all that) I always wanted to take the Executor for a proper test drive.And yeah, Niko was a good protagonist. He was reasonably insane, and it was pretty cool driving around in a black Cognoscenti wearing a suit and listening to the jazz station.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that felt Oblivion's equal leveling detracted from the game. I missed the panicky moments of encountering something far beyond my abilities in Morrowind (the tombs, in particular :P), eventually followed by the elation of doing some serious damage when I returned later at a higher level.

Perhaps that's why I like Demon's Souls so much... the sheer joy of finally feeding some bastard his spleen, after having been shown your own colon a dozen times over just by walking in the same room.

yeah I hope his own game gets widespread release, maybe even on XBLA and PSN? one can only hope...(that, and there will be spoken dialogue, and all the characters will be voiced by Yahtzee himself, seeing as how he's a pretty capable voice actor from what we've seen)

bet he's gonna throw in a scene where some generic space marines appear and all get fried? lol his fav

CyricZ:Note to self: Find Yahtzee a robust Eastern European man to keep him warm on those cold Aussie nights.

Actually, Yahtzee, nearly all advances in mathematical theory and application have come from adding things to both sides to change the form of whatever it is you're trying to mess with. Hell, many elementary differential equations require that you multiply by an integration factor on both sides to obtain the answer.

I have to completely disagree on Niko Bellic being a good character. When i was playing GTA IV, for the first few missions I thought it was interesting that they had seemingly created a character with morals and a backstory; this was short lived however. As the game went on, they strayed further and further from the original character of Niko, and he transitioned very jerkily from "Willing to do anything for his cousin and what he believes in, hesitant to kill" to "Willing to do anything, even mass murder, for the sake of a little money". I thought it was pretty terrible character development personally.

There's a moment in Parasite Eve when, once you've upgraded a weapon into a cock-death dealing monstrosity that even makes Ray Charles flinch, that killing everything that was annoying you before becomes quite fun. And then you beat the game, and they stick you in a tower that has basically everything you killed and pissed off, deciding that your ass was quite delicious and they would like to have another.

Progression of character, via skills or weapons, is always a fun thing, but sometimes it just takes away from the purest element that you started playing and loving the game for. Case in point is Silent Hill, where finding a tuning fork and bubblegum might count as your upgrade for the location. And the bubblegum has one use, at which point you try to say the Duke Nukem line and then scream like a little girl as some random bloke with heads for feet eats you.

Oblivion suffered heavily from the "Final Fantasy 8" complex, where unless you found some way to cheat the system and rob a church or two, your weaponry was the only thing between you and an early visit between you and a skull polisher in the local Assassin's guild. In both games, you move forward, and all senses of accomplishment are thrown out the window the moment you are put outside the storyline and told to waddle from A to B.

If NEXON wasn't such bastards, then I'd recommend DFO as a source of "I spent HOW many hours playing this? Screw the hard guys, I'm going poke the level 13 monsters since I'm level 30." revenge.

wow, I argued against that point in that other thread. I think it might have been yellowhead. I feel relevant now.

Anyway, yea, like Metroid prime's black hole. That thing was badass but it didn't work on the final bosses, it was justa fun little tool to use agains tminions for some extra fun at the end. That kind of stuff is what makes games awesome, but an unbreakable guard/counter doesn't make a game fun unless you still have the final boss smash right through it.

Kushin:Ah... I remember Metroid Fusion, owning the SA-X with the Ice Beam after so long felt so good.

Personally, I thought the part in Zero Mission where you get your Power Suit back from the space pirates was the bes revenge time in a game. After having to sneak around for so long, it was amazingly fun to just be able to murder everything in the face.